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THE CENTENNIAL OF THE ELECTION 
OF JEFFERSON. 

By Edivhi D. Mead. 

Reprinted fiom the Editor's Talkie of the In^ew Enc.i.and Magazine, October, 1900. 



THO:.IAS JEFFERSON was 
the first Nineteenth Century 
president. His administration 
began just as the century began. 
The observance of the centennial 
of his election involves a review of 
the century. It has been a mo- 
mentous century for the whole 
world. And when all deductions 
have been made, and with all 
misgivings and sorrows at evil 
tendencies which have become prom- 
inent and threatening in the present 
time and which we do not whitewash 
nor close our eyes to, who does not 
see that the world is a better place to 
live in at the close of the Nineteenth 
Century than at its beginning; who 
does not see that it has been a cen- 
tury of progress ; who does not find 
the pages which picture its last dec- 
ade — up to the time, at least, of the 
beginning of the wickedness in the 
Philippines and the Transvaal — 
more cheerful pages than those 
which picture its first? There is a 
better England, a better France, a 
better Germany, a better Italy, a 
better Russia and a better Spain. 

Would we realize how great the 
strides which the United States has 
taken in the century, we should cre- 
ate for ourselves a picture of the 
United States of 1800. Fortunately 
it has bieen done for us in a masterly 
manner, by Henry Adams, in his His- 
tory of the United States in the Ad- 
ministrations of Jefferson and Madi- 
son. This history altogether is a 
great work, one of the few works in 
American history which covers the 
period which it treats in a thoroughly 
satisfactory and adequate way. It 



possesses every characteristic of the 
(best historical writing — splendid 
Ischolarship, a familiarity with the pe- 
riod born of indefatigable and sym- 
pathetic study, a rare grasp of the 
principles which were then working 
(themselves out in our politics, a 
^^enius for portrait painting which 
i[aakes Jeliferson and his contempo- 
ijaries live and breathe in its pages, 
and a literary style surpassed by that 
df Parkman alone among our Ameri- 
can historians, if surpassed at all. It 
is preeminently the work which 
s.'hould be read by the student who 
would understand our poHtical Hfe 
at the beginning of the centur_, t^'^^nd 
the first half of its first volume is^gr:- 
voted to painting a general picture of 
American life in its various aspects, 
in 1800, when Jeft'erson was elected 
President, which is a worthy counter- 
part of the famous chapter in which 
Macaulay, in the first volume of his 
history, depicts the condition of 
England in the seventeenth century. 
iVVe could wish that these two hun- 
dred pages might be bound separate- 
ly as a little book on "The United 
States a Hundred Years Ago." A 
comparison of this picture of 1800 
with the present time tells the story 
of our advance. 



The election of Jefferson in 1800 
marked an epoch in our history. "The 
revolution of 1800." Jefferson himself 
believed and wrote many years after- 
wards, "was as real a revolution in 
the principles of our government as 
that of 1776 was in its form." This 
may be extravagant ; but the revolu- 



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THE CENTENNIAL OF THE ELECTION OF JEFFERSON 



tion was a real and great one — and 
most of us agree that it was impera- 
tive and salutary. Not many to-day 
will be disposed to controvert Jeffer- 
son's biographer when he declares 
that "the best chance of republican 
America is an adherence to the gen- 
eral line of politics of which he was 
the embodiment. If Jefferson was 
wrong, America is wrong ; if Ameri- 
ca is right, Jefferson was right." 

Perhaps the most welcome and use- 
ful of the Old South leaflets of the 
summer, to which we have referred, 
is that which reprints Jefferson's 'In- 
augural, with the notes, largel}' 
drawn from Henry Adams's first vol- 
ume, which make clearer to us its his- 
torical character and setting. "Time, 
which has laid its chastening hand or 
many reputations, and has given tc 
many once famous formulas a mean- 
ing unsuspected by their authors, has 
not altogether spared Jefferson's first 
Inaugural Address, although it was 
for a long time almost as well known 
as the Declaration of Independence. 
Ye^ Ms address was one of the few 
st/ , papers which should have losi, 
little of its interest by age. As the 
starting-point of a powerful political 
party, the first Inaugural was a 
standard by which future movements 
were measured ; and it went out of 
fashion only when its principles were 
fully accepted or thrown aside." So 
much a part of the common stock 
have the political doctrines become 
for which Jefferson stood, that we 
to-day read their brief summary in 
his Inaugural with less interest than 
the magnanimous words in which 
Jefferson lifts himself and seeks to lift 
his countrymen above partisan ani- 
mosities and rancor into the atmos- 
phere of a common patriotism and 
duty. His plea to the extreme Fed- 
eralists of the North reminds us of 
Lincoln's noble and tender plea sixty 
years later to the Secessionists of the 
South ; it is an expression of the 
same charity and catholicity, and it 
was addressed to a bitterness, sus- 
picion and misrepresentation which 



had pursued him during the previous 
campaign as inexorably as they after- 
wards pursued Lincoln and as they 
pursued no man between Jefferson 
and Lincoln. 



Truisms as the doctrines of Jeffer- 
son have become to most simple 
Americans, it is still salutary to read 
his famous summary of them in his 
Inaugural and reflect upon the best 
program of democracy a hundred 
years ago. 

"Let us, then, with courage and confi- 
dence pursue our own Federal and Repub- 
lican principles, our attachment to union 
and representative government. Kindly 
separated by nature and a wide ocean from 
the exterminating havoc of one-quarter of 
the globe; too high-minded to endure the 
degradations of the others; possessing a 
chosen country, with room enough for our 
descendants to the thousandth and thou- 
sandth generation; entertaining a due 
sense of our equal right to the use of our 
own faculties, to the acquisitions of our 
own industry, to honor and confidence 
from our fellow-citizens, resulting not 
from birth, but from our actions and their 
sense of them; enlightened by a benign re- 
ligion, professed, indeed, and practised in 
various forms, yet all of them inculcating 
honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and 
the love of man; acknowledging and ador- 
ing an overruling Providence, which by all 
its dispensations proves that it delights in 
the happiness of man here and his greater 
happiness hereafter, — with all these bless- 
ings, what more is necessary to make us 
a happy and a prosperous people? Still 
one thing more, fellow-citizens, — a wise 
and frugal government, which shall re- 
strain men from injuring one another, shall 
leave them otherwise free to regulate their 
own pursuits of industry and improvement, 
and shall not take from the mouth of labor 
the bread it has earned. This is the sum 
of good government, and this is necessary 
to close the circle of our felicities. 

"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the 
exercise of duties which comprehend 
everything dear and valuable to you, it is 
proper you should understand what I deem 
the essential principles of our government, 
and consequently those which ought to 
shape its administration. I will compress 
them within the narrowest compass they 
will bear, stating the' general principle, but 
not all its limitations: equal and exact 
justice to all men, of whatever state or 



H.O.LoclgO 
18 Ja. 'OO 



THE CEXTENNIAL OE THE ELECT I OX OE JEEEERSOX. 



3 



persuasion, religious or political; peace, 
commerce, and honest friendship with all 
nations, entangling alliances with none, 
the support of the state governments in all 
their rights, as the most competent admin- 
istrations for our domestic concerns and 
the surest bulwarks against anti-republi- 
can tendencies; the preservation of the 
general government in its whole constitu- 
tional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our 
peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous 
care of the right of election by the people, 
— a mild and safe corrective of abuses 
whiclr are lopped by the sword of revolu- 
tion where peaceable remedies are unpro- 
vided; absolute acquiescence in the deci- 
sions of the majority, the vital principle 
of republics, from which is no appeal but 
to force, the vital principle and immediate 
parent of despotism; a well-disciplined 
militia, our best reliance in peace and for 
the first moments of war, till regulars may 
relieve them; the supremacy of the civil 
over the military authority; economy in 
the public expense, that labor may be 
lightly burthened; the honest payment of 
our debts and sacred preservation of the 
public faith; encouragement of agriculture, 
and of commerce as its handmaid; the dif- 
fusion of information and arraignment of 
all abuses at the bar of the public reason; 
^freedom of religion; freedom of the press, 
and freedom of person under the protec- 
tion of the habeas corpus, and trial by 
juries impartially selected. These princi- 
ples form the bright constellation which 
has gone before us and guided our steps 
through an age of revolution and reforma- 
tion. The wisdom of our sages and blood 
of our heroes have been devoted to their 
attainment. They should be the creed of 
our political faith, the text of civic instruc- 
tion, the touchstone by which to try the 
services of those we trust; and, should .ve 
wander from them in moments of error or 
of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps 
and to regain the road which alone leads 
to peace, liberty, and safety." 

This simple creed and proo^ram 
ijains double impressiveness and sig- 
nificance from the character of its 
great author and his ideals of human 
history and the vocation among the 
nations of the new republic. No- 
where are those ideals stated more 
truly or in words more commanding 
-for the republic to-day than by Mr. 
Adams in his liistory. 

"Jeflferson aspired beyond the ambition 
<^f a nationality, and embraced in his view 
the whole future of man. That the United 



States should become a nation like France, 
England, or Russia, should conquer the 
world like Rome, or develop a typical race 
like the Chinese, was no part of his 
scheme. He wished to begin a new era. 
Hoping for a time when the world's ruling 
interests should cease to be local and 
should become universal; when questions 
of boundary and nationality should be- 
come insignificant; when armies and 
navies should be reduced to the work of 
police, and politics should consist only in 
non-intervention, — he set himself to the 
task of governing, with this golden age in 
view. Few men have dared to legislate as 
though eternal peace were at hand, in a 
world torn by wars and convulsions and 
drowned in blood; but this was what Jef- 
ferson aspired to do. Even in such 
dangers, he believed that Americans 
might safely set an example which the 
Christian world should be led by interest 
to respect and at length to imitate. As he 
conceived a true American policy, war 
was a blunder, an unnecessary risk; and 
even in case of robbery and aggression the 
United States, he believed, had only to 
stand on the defensive in order to obtain 
justice in the end. He would not consent 
to build tip a new nationality merely to 
create more navies and armies, to perpet- 
uate the crimes and follies of Europe; the 
central government at Washington should 
not be permitted to indulge in the miser- 
able ambitions that had made the Old 
World a hell, and frustrated the hopes of 
humanity." 

* * 

Perhaps there has been no presi- 
dential campaign in our history 
which points more morals for us than 
the campaign of 1800, which resulted 
in the election of Jefiferson. A few 
days ago we read in one of our ablest 
and most respectable journals — 
abler and more respectable than any 
journal of Boston or Philadelphia 
in 1800 — an extraordinary tirade 
against one of the candidates for the 
presidency in the present year of 
grace. "His supporters are general- 
ly the lawless and the discontented. 
The men who think that they have 
nothing to lose by revolution and im- 
agine that they have much to gain by 
it, who are ready to overturn our 
present commercial and industrial 
system and take their chances, who 
are without property and withottt the 



THE CENTENNIAL OF THE ELECTION OE JEEEERSON 



talents and the industry to acquire 
property, who desire to control the 
conditions of labor in America by 
means of secret organizations neither 
known to the law nor regulated by 
it," who denotmce the Supreme 
Court, glory in lynch law, get up 
mobs, and do all manner of dreadful 
things, which time and space would 
fail us to repeat, — of this "excessive 
and uncontrolled individualism," de- 
clared the journal, this man is the 
"chosen representative." 

Hear now Mr. Adams's summing 
up of the tirades against J ;fiferson by 
the Federalists of New England anc 
New York in 1800: "Every dissolute 
intriguer, loose-liver, forger, false- 
coiner, and prison-bird ; every hair- 
brained, loud-talking demagogue 
every speculator, scofifer and athe- 
ist, was a follower of Jeflferson ; and 
Jefferson was himself the incarna- 
tion of their theories." The parallel- 
ism is didactic. The one arraignment 
is just as true as the other — and jus* 
as false ; and the falsehood is chiefly 
not in what is said, but in what is no:: 
said. The new faith of every age, 
political and religious faith alike, wil! 
always draw the faithless to its stand- 
ard, not because they apprehend the 
faith, but because they are tickled by 
the slights to the established, by the 
non-conformity and the idol-break- 
ing; and the new faith must pay the 
penalty of their following until it, in 
turn, becomes customary, fashion- 
able and orthodox, as Jefferson's 
democracy became, and as many po- 
litical and social doctrines, so shock- 
ing to many respectable and proper 
folk in this year 1900, will become 
before the year 2000. 



Democracy altogether, as we un- 
derstand democracy, and as Jefferson 
understood it, was under suspicion in 
.1800. It is not strange, because 
America, like the rest of the world, 
had just been witnessing the excesses 
of the French Revolution, perpe- 
trated in the name of democracy. 



"Thenceforward the mark of a wise 
and good man was that he abhorred 
the French Revolution and believed 
democracy to be its cause. The an- 
swer to every democratic suggestion 
ran in a set phrase, "Look at 
France!' '" The wild and morbid talk 
of Fisher Ames at the time of Jeffer- 
son's election is almost incredible. "I 
hold democracy," George Cabot wrote 
as late as 1804, "In its natural opera- 
tion to be the government of the 
worst." "If no man in New Eng- 
land," he said, "could vote for legis- 
lators, who was not possessed in his 
own right of two thousand dollars' 
valtie in land, we could do something 
better." "Your people, sir," ex- 
claimed Alexander Hamilton, strik- 
ing his hand on the table at a New 
York dinner, — "your people is a great 
beast!" Jefferson, firm in his faith in 
democracy through all its rudenesses 
and crudenesses, knowing well what 
the real cause of the French Revolu- 
tion was, and what the classes and 
the forces are which most persistent- 
ly threaten free states, was almost a 
representative of the Red Terror to 
the pious parsons of New England 
and New York, who assumed that 
the people of America were "in the 
same social condition as the con- 
temporaries of Catiline and the ad- 
herents of Robespierre." "I should 
as soon have expected to see a cow 
in a drawing-room as a Jacobin," 
said a lady of the time ; and certain it 
is that few Boston or New York par- 
lors would have been open to Thom- 
as Jefferson in 1800. Men proved in 
pamphlets, to their own satisfaction, 
that Mr. Jefferson "hated the Consti- 
tution" and was "pledged to subvert 
it." He would "tumble the financial 
system of the country into ruin at one 
stroke," which would stop all pay- 
ments of interest on the public debt 
and bring on "universal bankruptcy 
and beggary." These were the most 
respectable of his prophesied sins. 
There were few pulpits from 
which he was not denounced. "A 
literature belonging to this sub- 



THE CEXTEXXIAL OF THE ELECTION OF JEFFERSON. 



ject exists," says Mr. Adams, "stacks 
of newspapers and sermons, mostly 
dull, and wanting literary merit. 
In a few of them Jefferson fig- 
ured under the well remembered 
disguises of Puritan politics: he was 
Ephraim, and had mixed himself 
among the people ; had apostatized 
from his God and religion ; gone to 
Assyria, and mingled himself among 
the. heathen; or he was Jeroboam, 
who drove Israel from following the 
Lord and made them sin a great sin." 
The accounts of the campaign given 
by Tucker in his Life of JefTerson (II, 
70-80), and especially by Randall, 
should be read, and the passages in 
the charming "Domestic Life of 
Thomas JefYerson," by Miss Ran- 
dolph, who prints the indignant letter 
from JefTerson to Uriah Mc Gregory, 
of Connecticut, concerning certain 
aspersions upon his common honesty 
— the one only sign of resentment into 
which he was stung by his swarm 
of malevolent critics. "During the 
political campaign of the simimer of 
1800," writes Miss Randolph, ''Jef- 
ferson was denounced by many di- 
vines as an atheist and a French in- 
fidel. These attacks were made upon 
him by half the clergy of New Eng- 
land, and by a few in other northern 
states ; in the former section, however, 
they were most virulent. The common 
people of the country were told that 
should he be elected their Bibles 
would be taken from them. In New 
York the Rev. Dr. John M. Mason 
published a pamphletattackingjeffer- 
son, which was entitled 'The Voice 
of Warning to Christians on the En- 
suing Election.' In New England 
sermons against JelYerson were print- 
ed and scattered through the land." 

But altogether the most compre- 
hensive and vivacious summary of 
the slanders upon Jefferson in this 
memorable campaign is that by Mr. 
Parton, who devotes an entire chap- 
ter in his Life of Jefiferson to "The 
Campaign Lies of 1800." "That 
product of the human intellect," he 
says, "which we denominate Cam- 



paign Lies, though it did not orig- 
inate in the United States, hashere at- 
tained a development unknown in 
other lands. Thomas Jefferson, who 
began so many things in the early 
career of the United States, was the 
first object upon whom the Campaign 
Liar tried his unpractised talents. 
The art, indeed, may be said to have 
been introduced in 1796 to prevent 
his election to the Presidency ; but it 
was in 1800 that it was clearly de- 
veloped into a distinct species of 
falsehood. The Campaign Liar was 
hard put to it. Jefferson's life pre- 
sented to his view a most discourag- 
ing monotony of innocent and bene- 
ficial actions, — twenty-five years of 
laborious and unrecompensed public 
service, relieved by the violin, 
science, invention, agriculture, the 
education of his nephews and the 
love of his daughters. A life so ex- 
ceptionally blameless did not give 
fair scope to talent ; still the Cam- 
paign Liar of 1800 did very well for a 
beginner;" — and Mr. Parton follows 
him through his political, personal 
and religious attacks. He tells, as 
Miss Randolph does, only much more 
fully, about Dr. Mason's pamphlet 
and his frantic prayers ; he reports the 
sermon upon the "Claims of Thomas 
Jefferson to the Presidency exam- 
ined at the bar of Christianity," and 
tells of the other sermons and of the 
sundry syllogisms which issued in 
assurances that Jefferson "aimed at 
the destruction of the Christian reli- 
gion." So widely was this notion 
spread that tradition reports that, 
"when the news of Jefferson's elec- 
tion reached New England, some old 
ladies in wild consternation hung 
their Bibles down the well, in the 
butter-cooler." The truth is, of 
course, that Jefferson was a reverent, 
religious man, and a Christian. "I 
am a Christian," he once wrote, "in 
the only sense in which Jesus wished 
any one to be, — sincerely attached to 
his doctrines in prefernce to all 
others." He loved most warmly the 
words of Jesus ; he once carefully cut 



THE CEXTEXXLIL OF THE ELECT! OX OE JEEEEKSOX 



all of the very words of Jesus from 
copies of the New Testament, and 
pasted them together in a little book, 
which he kept and pondered. His 
firm belief in immortality and the 
great fundamental truths of religious 
philosophy appears from his letters. 
But he was a rational man, and held 
the same attitude with reference to 
the superstitions of the church in 
1800 that Emerson and Parker and 
Martineau have held in our own time. 
The curious thing about it all is that 
the pulpit should have fulminated as 
it did against Jefferson, while it let 
Adams alone ; for, as Mr. Partori 
truly says, "there was not a pin to 
choose between the heterodoxy of the 
two candidates ; indeed, Mr. Adams 
was sometimes in his familiar letters 
more pronounced in his dissent fron 
established beliefs than Jefferson; h( 
was by far the more impatient of the 
two with popular creeds ; and as for 
the doctrine of the Trinity, he greatl) 
surpassed Jefiferson in his aversion t(i 
it." Of the popular doctrine of th<; 
person of Christ he once declared that 
"until this awful blasphemy was go: 
rid of, there will never be any liberal 
science in this world." "And yet hi' 
escaped anathema!" Undoubtedly 
the great reason why Jefiferson earned 
such enmity from the clergy was the 
conspicuous part he had taken in the 
separation of Church and State in 
Virginia. This divorce was vehe- 
mently opposed by the clergy in every 
state. In was not until 1834 that it 
was made complete in Massachusetts ; 
and many students will remember 
how Lyman Beecher fought it in 
Connecticut. Some of the clergy, 
even in Virginia, cherished hopes of 
undoing Jefferson's work there ; but, 
said he, "the returning good sense of 
our country threatens abortion to 
their hopes, and they believe that any 
portion of power confided to me will 
be exerted in opposition to their 
claims. And they believe rightly ; for 
I have sworn upon the altar of God 
eternal hostility against every form 
of tyranny over the mind of man." 



Tyranny in every form Thomas Jef- 
ferson hated with a perfect hatred ; 
and he hated religious tyranny with 
the rest. "I never will," he once 
wrote, "by any word or act bow to 
the shrine of intolerance or admit a 
right of inquiry into the religious 
opinions of others. On the contrary, 
we are bound, you, I and every one, 
to make common cause, even with 
error itself, to maintain the common 
right of freedom of conscience. We 
ought with one heart and one hand to 
hew down the daring and dangerous 
efforts of those who would seduce the 
public opinion to substitute itself into 
that tyranny over religious faith 
which the laws have so justly abdi- 
cated. For this reason, were my 
opinions up to the standard of those 
who arrogate the right of questioning 
them, I would not countenance that 
arrogance by descending to an expla- 
nation." 



The more violent Federalists, in 
the exceeding greatness of their rage 
against Jefferson, even conspired for 
the election of Aaron Burr, when the 
election was thrown into the House 
of Representatives, wiUing to make 
terms with him and thinking he 
would be more pliant to their wishes. 
Cabot and Otis, in Massachusetts, 
wrote to Hamilton, favoring this idea. 
No less a man than Marshall, then 
secretary of state, actually balanced 
between Jefferson and Burr, writing 
to Hamilton while the matter was 
pending that he had not determined 
in his own mind to which the prefer- 
ence was due. He finally concluded 
that "still greater danger may be ap- 
prehended from Mr. Burr than from 
Mr. Jefferson ;" but he "could not 
bring himself to aid Mr. Jefferson," 
to whom he had "almost insuperable 
objections." "His foreign prejudices 
seem to me totally to unfit him for 
the chief magistracy. In addition, 
Mr. Jefferson appears to me to be a 
man who will embody himself with 
the House of Representatives. By 



THE CEXTENXIAL OF THE ELECTION OF JEFFERSOX 



/ 



weakening the office of President, he 
will increase his personal power ; he 
will diminish his responsibility, and 
sap the fundamental principles of the 
government." How groundless this 
fear of Marshall's was Jefferson's ad- 
ministration well proved. The cen- 
tennial of Jefiferson's inauguration is 
also the centennial of Marshall's ap- 
pointment as chief justice ; and the 
republic cherishes, as it ever will, 
feelings of profound gratitude to him 
for that long line of judicial decisions 
and opinions by which, in that for- 
mative period, he did so much to 
consolidate our national life and 
character. But he did not, in this 
great work, find Jefferson across his 
path — nor Madison ; in the hands of 
neither was the position or power of 
the executive "weakened," or the 
administration conducted in a man- 
ner to jeopardize or prejudice in any 
manner the true national prestige and 
integrity; whatever prejudice or 
jeopardy these suffered in those six- 
teen years came from the men who in 
1800 were talking so vehemently of 
the danger that Jeflferson would "sap 
the fundamental principles of the 
government." As to respect for the 
dignity of the presidential office, it is 
edifying to compare the courses of 
Jefferson and Marshall during the 
trial of Burr, which is done so well by 
Schouler in the following passage: 

"Marshall's partisan resentment had not 
wholly passed away, we may well surmise, 
when Aaron Burr, bankrupt in purse and 
reputation, came in peril of the gallows 
after the exposure of his treasonable 
Western conspiracy during Jefferson's 
second term. If the President had urged 
on the prosecution, too eager, as it 
seemed, to crush the man who had once 
played treacherously to supplant him, 
ftiarshall appeared not less sedulous to 
protect the culprit. Whether upon sound 
reasoning or otherwise, the chief justice at 
Burr's trial so laid down the law and 
strained the admission of testimony, that 
prosecutions for treason against the Union 
must since have been scarcely worth at- 
tempting, on the strength of such a prece- 
dent. And while the case was pending he 
sent a subpoena ordering the President 
himself to appear at the trial and bring a 



certain paper with him. What process 
had the common law ever invoked to sub- 
ordinate the sovereign to the courts? 
Jefferson sustained well the dignity of his 
station as the American chief executive. 
He gave the summons no notice; he would 
not go, but informed the district attorney 
that the paper might be obtained some 
other way. Marshall was wise enough to 
press the experiment no further; and our 
Supreme Court, in a later and wiser gen- 
eration, has refused to issue mandates to 
the President of the United States, when 
convinced of its own powerlessness to 
compel obedience." 

It should be said that Hamilton, 
during the consultations of the Fed- 
eralist leaders about throwing their 
influence for Burr against Jefferson, 
advised steadily against it. Jefferson, 
he conceded, although he called him 
"a contemptible hypocrite," had 
"pretensions to character." He wrote 
to Bayard, "very, very confidential- 
ly," that in his opinion Burr was "in- 
ferior in real ability to Mr. Jefferson." 
"As to Burr, there is nothing in his 
favor. . . . He is truly the Cati- 
line of America. . . . Yet," he 
added, in a letter to Wolcott, "it may 
he well enoitgh to throw out a line 
for him, in order to tempt him to 
start for the plate, and then lay the 
foundation of dissension between the 
two chiefs. You may communicate 
this letter to Marshall and Sedg- 
zvick.'' Sedgwick's opinion of Jeffer- 
son was that he was "a feeble and 
false enthusiastic theorist, . . . plausi- 
l)le in manners, crafty in conduct, 
persevering in the pursuit of his ob- 
ject, regardless of the means by 
which it is attained, and equally re- 
gardless of an adherence to truth." 
It should be remembered, however, 
that Sedgwick pronounced John 
Adams "a semi-maniac, who, in his 
soberest senses, was the greatest 
marplot in nature." He believed that 
Jefferson was "a sincere and enthusi- 
astic democrat in principle." Hamil- 
ton too admitted that Jefferson was 
"too much in earnest in his democ- 
racy;" "his politics were tinctured 
with fanaticism," he said. The 
people generally did not have much 



THE CEXTEXMAL OF THE ELECTIOX OF JEFFERSON. 



doubt about Jefferson being "in ear- 
nest in his democracy." , It was pre- 
cisely because they did beHeve this 
that violent Federalists, not so scru- 
pulous or politic as the eminent gen- 
tlemen whom we have named, 
actually conspired to prevent his in- 
auguration by force. The more repu- 
table sought to "make terms" with 
Jefferson, to get pledges from him to 
preserve the actual fiscal system, to 
preserve and enlarge the navy, and 
continue their friends in the ofBces 
they filled. Hamilton labored on these 
points. "Coming out of the Senate 
Chamber one day," Jefferson writes, 
while the presidential election was in 
suspense in Congress, "I found 
Gouverneur Morris on the steps. He 
stopped me and began a conversatior 
on the strange and portentous state 
of things then existing, and went on 
to observe that the reasons why th*- 
minority of states was so opposed to 
my being elected were that they ap- 
prehended that (i) I would turn all 
Federalists out of office, (2) put dow;i 
the navy, (3) wipe off the public debt ; 
that I need only to declare, or author- 
ize my friends to declare, that I 
would not take these steps, and in- 
stantly the event of the election 
would be fixed. I told him that I 
should leave the world to judge of the 
course I meant to pursue by that 
which I had pursued hitherto, believ- 
ing it to be my duty to be passive and 
silent during the present scene ; that 
I should certainly make no terms, 
should never go into the office of 
President by capitulation, nor with 
my hands tied by any conditions 
which would hinder me from pursu- 
ing the measures which I should 
deem for the public good." When 
the report of this declaration of inde- 
pendence spread, there doubtless 
spread with it declarations galore 
that the "contemptible hypocrite" 
was secretly resolved to loot the 
offices and wreck the finances of 
the country; and in this con- 
nection the study of the actual 
condition of the finances under his 



administration and the comparison 
of his attitude toward the civil ser- 
vice with that of present day admin- 
istrations become didactic indeed. 

But the more violent and less repu- 
table, we say, were not content to 
talk about pledges and concessions ; 
they talked about guns, and were 
never going to permit a man so men- 
acing to law and order and all good 
American institutions as was Thomas 
Jefferson to take his seat in the presi- 
dential chair. The general facts are 
of course well known ; but it is even 
yet profitable to read the details as 
given by Randall in his Life of Jeffer- 
son (II, 602. etc.) and elsewhere. Sur- 
veying with Randall the whole course 
of Jefferson's opponents toward him 
during that memorable campaign, no 
just and sober man can withhold his 
Amen to this final word of his: 

"If men have a right, as moral beings 
and patriots, to violate the spirit of the 
institutions under which they Hve, to sub- 
vert or bring to an end the constitution of 
their country, to invite a resort to civil 
war, rather than surrender some technical 
advantage with which the letter of the law 
chances to clothe them, in an unanticipated 
contingency, to 'rule or ruin,' then the 
conduct of the Federalists was moral and 
patriotic on this occasion; otherwise it 
was not. And when we take their own 
showing of the character of the presi- 
dential candidates, the real ground of their 
insuperable hostility to Jefferson, we 
have a still further specimen of the politi- 
cal morals and real political doctrines of 
the ultra-Federal leaders. These were the 
men who railed as much at the want of 
integrity, as the want of knowledge, in 
popular constituencies!" 

The impartial historian, as well as 
the loving biographer, passes the 
same severe judgment. That Mr. 
McMaster, who in his second volume 
treats the campaign of 1800 so fully, 
is impartial, that he does not strain 
points at any rate to do justice to 
Jefferson, appears from the fact that 
he gives more space in his pages to 
reporting the vehement talk of the 
Republicans against the Federalists 
than to that of the Federalists against 
the Republicans ; but he character- 



THIl CENTEX XIJL OE THE ELECTION OE JEEEERSON. 



izes the advice of the ultra- Federal- 
ists in Congress in favor of the sup- 
port of Burr against JelTerson in the 
following plain terms: 

"Advice of this kind was to be expected 
from the people and the press, but not 
from the men whose duty it now became 
to choose a President. The Federalists 
had been defeated by eight electoral votes. 
They were cut ofif by the Constitution 
from every possible hope of electing 
their " men. They had nothing to do 
but to choose between Jefferson and 
Burr. There was no occasion for any 
constitutional difficulty; the path for them 
to take lay right before them. No man of 
either party doubted, or pretended to 
doubt, that the wish of every Republican 
was and had been to make Jefferson the 
next President. Had the Federal repre- 
sentatives in Congress, therefore, been the 
honest patriots they pretended to be; had 
their dread of rebellion been real, and not 
the idle trumpery of a heated campaign, 
they would, when the time came, every 
man of them, have repaired to the House 
of Representatives and promptly voted for 
Thomas JefTerson. But these Federalists, 
who for eight years had been accusing the 
Republicans of seeking to introduce the 
revolutionary principles of France, now 
attempted, from pure political malice, to 
involve the country in a civil war. Their 
first plan was to hinder any election, and 
leave to the Senate the duty of electing the 
Chief Justice, or some senator, President 
till Congress met again, or till a new elec- 
tion could be held by the people. Their 
second plan was to elect Aaron Burr." 



And what followed all this hysteria 
and malice, invocation of dread 
spectres and prediction of the mob? 
What was the sequel? "An adminis- 
tration," a? Schouler justly describes 
it, "peaceful, progressive and popu- 
lar beyond all precedent," — especially 
strong and successful just where the 
direst disaster had been foreboded, in 
the management of the finances of the 
country. "The policy of this remark- 
able adnn'nistration," writes this ad- 
mirer of Jefferson, "was at once and 
steadil}' sf.ccessftil in winning the 
people ; and the prestige of enthusi- 
asm became irresistible when con- 
joined with the prestige of success. 
An executive, neither the instrument 
of others nor a betraver of trusts, we 



may regard Jetiferson as the genuine 
personator of that to which France's 
First Consul presented contempora- 
neously the counterfeit, — a leader of 
the common people in the direction 
of their best desires." 

This verdict is not simply that of 
Jefferson's admirers. The historians 
are harmonious. Mr. Morse, in his 
volume on Jefferson, in the American 
Statesmen series, — and neither the 
series as a whole, nor Mr. Morse's 
volume in particular, will ever be ac- 
cused of making admiration of Jeffer- 
son its forte, — uses terms almost 
identical. Mr. Schouler, in the pas- 
sage quoted, is writing of a time mid- 
way in Jefferson's second administra- 
tion, just before the troubles with 
England. Mr. Morse is writing of the 
close of his first administration, when 
the campaign for his reelection ap- 
proached. Everything, he says, "re- 
dounded to his good fame and popu- 
larity." The nation felt "comfortable 
and good-natured amid the broad 
visible facts of the passing time. . . . 
Were not expenses curtailed and 
taxes reduced, and debts being 
rapidly diminished? . . . Had the 
country been for many years past so 
free from irritation and anxiety grow- 
ing out of foreign affairs? . . . Had 
political kindliness ever before per- 
meated the nation as it did to-day? 
Four years of prosperity and tran- 
quillity left little room for discontent 
with the government. Amid such in- 
fluences political opposition pined 
and almost died. The Federalist 
party shrank to insignificant dimen- 
sions ; indeed, since it flourished 
chiefly in a narrow locality, and was 
largely recruited from those peculiar 
spirits who seem to be by nature mal- 
contents and grumblers, it seemed on 
the verge of becoming rather a fac- 
tion than a party." 

The indorsement of primary inter- 
est and significance, however, was the 
indorsement by the nation at the 
time. In the election of 1804, which 
made Jefferson president for a sec- 
ond term, 176 electoral votes were 



10 THE CEXriiWLIL OF THE ELECTION OF JEFFERSON. 



cast; of these, Jefferson received 162. 
and his opponent 14. 



And how did it all look after half 
a century ? The middle of the century 
found another great struggle for 
freedom and equality gathering 
head and another political revolution 
impending. It found Abraham Lin- 
coln thinking on the Illinois prairies, 
and feeding his thought on Thomas 
Jefferson, — who, he declared, appeal- 
J ing to Jefferson in one of his strong 
arraignments of slavery in 1854, "is, 
and perhaps will continue to be, the 
most distinguished politician of our 
history." It was with Jefferson that 
he fortified himself in his denuncia- 
tions of the Supreme Court, which in 
those days of th^ slave power had be- 
come the great bulwark of conserva- 
tism, compromise and cowardice. 
For Jefferson in his day had encoun- 
tered the superstition which it suits 
certain classes in certain times to en- 
courage about the courts ; and his 
"imputations upon the judiciary" 
Avere one thing which the circum- 
cised New York and New England 
Federalists liked to cast in his teeth. 
Jefferson would hear nothing of the 
infallibility and indefectibility of 
courts ; he knew that they were 
neither more nor much less likely to 
err than presidents or senates. "You 
seem," he wrote to one, only six 
years before his death, "to consider 
the judges as the ultimate arbiters of 
all constitutional questions — a very 
dangerous doctrine indeed, and one 
which would place us under the 
despotism of an oligarchy. Our 
judges are as honest as other men, 
and not more so. They have, with 
others, the same passions for party, 
for power, and the privilege of 
their corps. Their maxim is, 'Boni 
jitdicis est ampliare jurisdictioncm :' 
and their power is the more danger- 
ous as they are in office for life, and 
not responsible, as the other func- 
tionaries are, to the elective control. 
The Constitution has erected no such 



single tribunal, knowing that, to 
whatever hands confided, with the 
corruptions of time and party, its 
members would become despots. It 
has more wisely made all the depart- 
ments co-equal and co-sovereign 
within themselves." 

Lincoln never tired of appealing to 
this strong utterance of red-blooded 
common sense, especially in his great 
debates with Douglas ; and he rang 
the changes on it to the more effect 
by appealing with it to eloquent facts 
in Judge Douglas's own legal career. 
To JefTerson the new Republican 
party appealed and dedicated itself, in 
its Philadelphia platform of 1856, 
which declared "in favor of restoring 
the action of the Federal government 
to the principles of Washington and 
Jefferson ;" and to Jefferson, Lincoln, 
in 1859, t'l^ year before his election, 
paid one of the highest tributes ever 
paid, pronouncing Jefferson the great 
pioneer and prophet of those princi- 
ples to which his own life was de- 
voted. To Henry L. Pierce and 
others who had invited him to be 
present at the celebration of Jeffer- 
son's birthday, in Boston, in April, 
1859, ^^^ wrote: 

"Bearing in mind that about seventy 
years ago two great political parties were 
first formed in this country, that Thomas 
Jefiferson was the head of one of them and 
Boston the headquarters of the other, it 
is both curious and interesting that those 
supposed to descend politically from the 
party opposed to Jefferson should now be 
celebrating his birthday in their own 
original seat of empire, wiiiie those claim- 
ing political descent from him have nearly 
ceased to breathe his name everywhere. 

"Remembering, too, that the Jefferson 
party was formed upon its supposed su- 
perior devotion to the personal rights of 
men, holding the rights of property to be 
secondary only, and greatly inferior, and 
assuming that the so-called Democracy of 
to-day are the Jefferson, and their oppo- 
nents the anti-Jefferson, party, it will be 
equally interesting to note how complete- 
ly the two have changed hands as to the 
principle upon which they were originally 
supposed to be divided. The Democracy 
of to-day hold the liberty of one man to 
be absolutely nothing, when in conflict 
with another man's right of property; 
Republicans, on the contrary, are for both 



THE CENTENNIAL OF THE ELECTION OF JEFFERSON. ii 



the man and the dollar, but in case of con- 
flict the man before the dollar. 

"I remember being once much amused 
at seeing two partially intoxicated men en- 
gaged in a fight with their great-coats on, 
which fight, after a long and rather harm- 
less contest, ended in each having fought 
himself out of his own coat and into that 
of the other. If the two leading parties 
of this day are really indentical with the 
two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, 
they have performed the same feat as the 
two drunken men. 

"But, soberly, it is now no child's play 
to save the principles of Jefferson from 
total overthrow in this nation. One would 
state with great confidence that he could 
convince any sane child that the simpler 
propositions of Euclid are true, but never- 
theless he would fail, utterly, with one who 
should deny the definitions and axioms. 
The principles of Jefferson are the defini- 
tions and axioms of free society. And yet 
they are denied and evaded, with no small 
show of success. One dashingly calls them 
'glittering generalities.' Another bluntly 
calls them "self-evident lies.' And others 
insidiously argue that they apply to 'su- 
perior races.' These expressions, differing 
in form, are identical in object and effect — 
the supplanting the principles of free gov- 
ernment, and restoring those of classifica- 
tion, caste and legitimacy. They would 
delight a convocation of crowned heads 
plotting against the people. They are the 
vanguard, the miners and sappers of re- 
turning despotism. We must repulse them, 
or they will subjugate us. This is a world 
of compensation; and he who would be no 
slave must consent to have no slave. Those 
who deny freedom to others deserve it not 
for themselves, and, under a just God, can- 
not long retain it. All honor to Jeffer- 
son — to the man who, in the concrete pres- 
sure of a struggle for national independ- 
ence by a single people, had the coolness, 
forecast and capacity to introduce into a 
merely revolutionary document an ab- 
stract truth, applicable to all men and all 
times, and so to embalm it there that to- 
day and in all coming days it shall be a 
rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very 
harbingers of reappearing tyranny and op- 
pression." 



Another half century has passed, 
and the centennial of the election of 
Jefferson has come ; and the republic 
still knows, as Lincoln knew, and 
Jefferson, that, whatever dangers 
threaten it, no serious dangers 
threaten from any tendencies or ef- 
forts of the plain people. The lesson 



of the Jefferson centennial is the les- 
son of faith in the people and in de- 
mocracy. One of our great journals 
published the other day an article on 
the danger of Imperialism. Such a 
danger, it said, is possible ; but it does 
not spring from growing armies nor 
the extension of our sway over sub- 
ject or dependent peoples. The 
transition from a republic to an em- 
pire iias been through periods of 
anarchy. The common people be- 
come lawless ; if democracy has not a 
government strong enough to put 
down the mob, the mob overthrows 
democracy ; and Napoleon is better 
than Robespierre. A list of strikes 
and labor troubles in America was 
given ; and the warning was sounded 
that a suitable number of such things 
might provoke the "man on horse- 
back." 

Lincoln and Jefferson would have 
told this journal that a survey of his- 
tory shows that the cause of the de- 
|-ay and overthrow of republics has 
(lOt been that which it assigned, but 
jJmost without exception the gradual 
and fatal growth of oligarchies, of po- 
litical corruption incident to the 
growing power of privileged classes, 
and of the injustice and oppression 
thereby inflicted upon the common 
people, which have brought their in- 
evitable results. Greece, Rome, Italy, 
France and England tell one story. 
The workingmen. the common peo- 
ple, may sometimes commit excesses ; 
they often do commit gross excesses 
— we have had too many instances of 
it in America. But a glance at the 
list given by this reactionary journal 
— with the same spirit and purpose as 
those of tiie New York and New 
England Federalists who stood pitted 
against Jefferson in 1800 — shows that 
in hardly a single case was the orig- 
inal and inciting wrong on the part of 
the common people. The case of 
Homestead is referred to in a manner 
implying that the lawlessness there 
was all upon the part of the working- 
men, and unprovoked. But all fair 
men know that the Homestead cor- 



' ofC 



12 THE L'ENyiNKlAL OF THE ELECT 10 X OE JEEFERSOX 



poration, acting in Mr. Carnegie's 
absence under Mr. Frick, was guilty 
of the greater lawlessness, by organ- 
izing as it did a private a'rmy to make 
war upon the strikers ; Mr. Carnegie 
has himself frankly conceded the mis- 
take and wrong. We turn back to the 
files of this same journal for its dis- 
cussion of the aflfair at the time, in 
1892, when it had no partisan ends to 
serve. It was then able to do even 
justice and, blaming the workingmen 
as they deserved for their excesses, to 
say also: "The Carnegie works have 
disregarded the public welfare, if not 
the public's rights. If they have not 
been the aggressors, they have pro- 
voked the aggression. They planted 
an armed stockade in the midst of a 
perfectly peaceful community and 
brought into the community armed 
mercenaries from abroad. Who fired 
the first gun is a matter of dispute — 
the Pinkerton men sa}' the mob 
fired it ; the newspaper reports say 
the Pinkerton men fired it. It is 
doubtful whether even a judicial in- 
vestigation will determine the ques- 
tion. But history will hold primarih 
responsible for the tragedy which fol- 
lowed the challenge and threat in- 
volved in bringing a paid and private 
soldiery upon the scene." We find 
the following passage also in one 
of the journal's editorials in 1892, 
inspired by the facts at Homestead ; 
and it is no less true in 1900: 

"We believe in democracy — that is, self- 
government. We disbelieve in aristocracy 
— that is, government by the best. Wo 
believe that the blunders of self-govern- 
ment are worth more to the world than 
the wisdom of aristocratic govern- 
ment. . . . Democracy, having al- 
ready gained control of church and state, 
is struggling for the control of industry 
also. It struggles blindly, as Demos al- 
ways struggles. It strikes out wildly, in- 
juring others and itself in its ill-directed 
eflforts at control, as it always has done. It 
is miscounselled, misguided, misruled, even 
in its half-conscious eiiforts to acquire 
rule. But its real demand is not merely 
for more wages or less hours, but for a 
real share in the rulership of the world's 
industry, as it already shares in the ruler- 
ship of schools, churches, states. The 



effort to maintain the labor union is an 
effort to acquire power. The effort to 
break up the labor union is an effort to 
dispossess of power. It is for this reason 
that the workingmen are more determined 
to maintain their labor union than their 
rate of wages. The fight for "recognition' 
is not the unmeaning fight it sometimes 
appears to be. It is Demos struggling to 
get his hand on the industrial sceptre. 
And this great movement is no more to 
be measured by the lawless acts of vio- 
lence which accompany it, and which 
really retard it, than the uprising of 
democracy could have been measured by 
the futile Wat Tyler's rebellion, or the 
Protestant Reformation by the excesses of 
the Anabaptists in Germany, the Icono- 
clasts in Holland, or the anti-popery 
rioters in London." 

It is true that there is much law- 
lessness in this country to-day ; but it 
is not true that the most conspicuous 
and dangerous lawlessness is among 
the workingmen and the common 
people, — as it was not true that the 
real foes of the American republic in 
1800 were among the followers of 
Thomas Jefferson. It is profitable 
for all of us to remember in this cen- 
tennial year, whatever our several po- 
litical opinions and whoever our 
presidential candidate, that campaign 
of vilification and frenzy, compared 
with which the worst suspicions and 
abuse current in this present presiden- 
tial year are slight indeed. It is profit- 
able to remember the horrors of the old 
Federalists and the rest — exceedingly 
reputable and proper people — at the 
thought of the election of Jefferson, 
whose presidency they were sure 
meant the fall of the republic and the 
crack of doom ; and to remember that 
no arguments which they hurled 
against him helped so much to elect 
him as those which depicted him as 
the prince of anarchy, and the great 
American democracy as all ready to 
resolve itself into a mob. Our own 
time has its own dangers ; we shall 
doubtless make our own mistakes; but 
Jefferson's great figure rises in timely 
and salutary prominence to warn us 
to keep out of ghost-land and not to 
repeat the mistakes of a hundred 

vears ago. 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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